Fix the fund before you pick the agency.
A franchise brand of about 400 locations asked what a fair agency retainer looked like. The bigger issue was the size of the ad fund paying for it.
Situation
The head of marketing was preparing an agency RFP for creative, social, and media, and asked four questions: what retainer is fair, which agencies to invite, how to structure scope on a limited budget, and where outside help fits. Underneath them was a structural gap. The ad fund collected nothing on delivery sales, a growing share of system revenue, and the base contribution rate was already low for a system that size.
What we did
We prepared a pre-RFP brief that put the ad fund first. It set out the case for applying the ad fund rate to delivery sales, shown as simple arithmetic for leadership and the franchisee council, plus options for a phased rate increase tied to fund reporting, local co-op consolidation, and negotiated media value. On the agency side it recommended unbundling media from creative and social, a 12-month term with renewal option, explicit inclusions, exclusions and an out-of-scope rate card, quarterly scope reviews, per-item pricing for repeatable work, and no performance fee in year one. Combined agency fees were framed against a 12% to 18% planning range of total fund spend. It split what to run in-house, including marketplace promotions inside delivery apps, from what to keep with an agency, and named a starting shortlist of independent agencies by discipline.
Outcome
A brief that reframed the budget conversation before agency selection began, with every benchmark labeled as a benchmark until the brand's actual fund, unit volumes, and delivery mix were in hand. It also recommended the brand own its scorecard, so renewal talks rest on its data rather than the agency's.
Facing something similar?
Fifteen minutes. We’ll tell you whether the pattern matches and what we’d do first.